.\" $OpenBSD: colortail.1,v 1.2 2012/08/19 22:30:37 ajacoutot Exp $
.TH COLORTAIL 1 "August 02, 2001" "System Utilities" colortail
.SH NAME
colortail \- output the last part of files, optionally with color

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B colortail
[\fIOPTION\fR]... [\fIFILE\fR]...

.SH DESCRIPTION
Print last 10 lines of each FILE to standard output.
With more than one FILE, precede each with a header giving the file name.

\fBcolortail\fR works like tail but can optionally read one or more config files
where it's specified which patterns results in which colors.

\fBcolortail\fR uses regular expressions (see \fIre_format(7)\fR) to determine
which lines and parts of lines to print in which colors.

.SH USAGE
Most options are easily understandood. The only somewhat strange option is the
\fI-k\fR option that specifies the config files so \fBcolortail\fR knows what
should be printed in which color.

If only one config file and one or more tail files is given the config file
is treated as a global one, i.e.

\fBcolortail\fR \fI-k\fR conf.global file1 file2 file3

Multiple config files are separated with a , and if one tail file shouldn't
have a config file just leave it blank, i.e.

\fBcolortail\fR \fI-k\fR conf.file1,,conf.file3 file1 file2 file3

.SH OPTIONS
This program follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options
starting with two dashes (`--'). A summary of options is included below.

.TP
.B \-f, \-\-follow
output appended data as the file grows

.TP
.B \-h, \-\-help
Show summary of options.
.TP
.B \-k, \-\-config=file, \-\-config=file1,file2,...
color config files for the tail files. If only one config file it's global
otherwise one config file for each tail file
.TP
\fB\-n, \-\-lines=\fR\fIN\fR
output the last \fIN\fR lines, instead of last 10
.TP
.TP
.B \-v, \-\-version
output version information and exit

.SH FILE FORMAT
The file specified by the \fI-k\fR option tells colortail how to display the
output according to regular expressions.  The file mapps one or more regular
expressions to one of the following colors: brightblue, brightred,
brightwhite, blue, cyan, green, magenta, yellow.  Comments start with a "#":

COLOR brightred
.br
{
.br
# matches the word "root"
.br
^.*(root).*$
.br
}
.br

.SH VERSION
0.3.0

.SH BUGS

Under certain circumstances \fBcolortail\fR may miss some characters when
tailing forever.  This bug also exists in \fItail(1)\fR.  If you have found a
bug, please send a mail to pt98jan@student.hk-r.se

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR re_format (7),
.BR tail (1)

.SH AUTHOR
.nr
Joakim Andersson <pt98jan@student.hk-r.se> - colortail
.br
Jan Schaumann <jschauma@netmeister.org> - this man page
